Propellerheads has invited a big group of sound designers to come up with signature patches for Thor, this is great news, but i feel it would be a bit redundant if i was to start a Thor project now when so many sound designers have contributed to presets for Thor.
So the future is pretty unknown in the Propellerheads sphere but you can bet i'll be working on something. At the moment most of my time goes to Zebra (VSTi) http://www.u-he.com/zebra/
and judging by this synth i could stick around for a long time.
/Michael
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Ok, ok. Thats not what I was hoping to hear, so I'll go to dreamland and imagine that you're just waiting for all the hype to settle down and then you'll bust back onto the Reason scene with a THOR patch set that will make the most "recognized" sound designer bow down, whilst the rest of us take in all the goodness that MK brings to the patch lovers world!!!! I can already hear the THOR version of Hamrmonizer Choir and I think it will sound even richer than the Zebra version.
wow hiyas pat :)
Glad to see your still around while i have my little affair on the VST side. Sometimes you simply have to change lane to spot new places and learn something new. IF the "recognized" sound designers dont deliver i might be there after all with some MK flavour. Hope everything is good on the music side in your end of the map.
Cheers
/Michael
Hmmm i better be honest...
When i first read about the invited sound designers i got a bit mad. I felt i had contributed to the community on several stages but obvious it wasnt enough for me to be considered as a sound designer. When i popped on the Reason scene i saw this instrument (Combinator) and no one had taking it very far the first year except for Flatpack. So i thought i'd better give people some clues of what can be done with Reason now that it had turned almost modular via the combinator.
K, so i give 1 year of my life to be spokesman for Reason to see next year i was gone with the morning news paper. I'm fully aware that Reason have MANY contributers but i couldnt help feeling a bit p..... of when i read about the invited sound designers.
I had plans for Thor and they left the building the same day. I know the next thing prolly will sound very whine'ish but remember a guy called Doru Malaia, he was one of the reason why i picked up on Reason and to me he was one of the good guys which contributed alot to the Reason community. Now when he proclaimed his cancer sickenss we all were sadned and when he left this world not a single word on Props site gave him some recognition. At that time i found it odd that he was not mentioned, still do.
I think every healthy company should bring in all they got at their disposal when launching something new, BUT why leave out those who try help building a community ?
Well, perhaps i'm too oldskool'ish for the target audience in props eyes but i DO know my stuff.
So there you have it :)
A pissed of sound designer ;)
Cheers
/Michael
I can definitely appreciate your viewpoint on this matter and to be honest, I felt that vibe (P'd off) when I read the original post which is why I decided to leave a comment.
I just hope that you don't let PHS's apparent disregard of your contributions turn you away. Without a doubt XSynth was a groundbreaking refill that is still very relevant in a lot Reason sound palettes. Not just for the presets, but for the "training" that comes along with dissecting an MK patch. I have no doubt that a THOR refill would be very successful and would continue to add to your reputation as a premier sound designer if not THEE premier Reason sound designer!!!
Thx pat :) it helps me patch up my bruised oversized XXL ego ;)
Cheers
/Michael
Hi Michael,
I certainly can understand and sympathize with your feelings about this.
Here's some things to consider:
Life is long (well it's fleeting too, of course) and I'm pretty confident that your contributions are likely to be recognized by the Props in time. In the misspent club days of my youth, I used to watch these guys swoop in on the new hot young things when they first walked in but they would play out their hand early in the night and I'd wait until a later to make my move because it's the one who's dancing with them at the end that gets to drive them home. Well, forgive me, that analogy is a bit of a stretch but seriously, I'd rather be involved with some future version of Reason (with new features to show off) and have that to look forward to than be lost in Reason 3.0 or 4.0.
I think you should take heart that the user reactions to XSynth put you in the upper echelon of all sound designers. I've found the vast majority of guest sound and patch designers for Reason (all versions) to be completely forgettable or worse. Are any Reason users reading their blogs about sound design? I don't think so.
Reason has a very large installed base and anything that you do in that realm will bring you considerably more recognition than most other products. This is good for your career, isn't it?
The Props are just people and we know that sometimes people aren't very mature, aware or sensitive. They screw up or are oblivious and yes, sometimes even jerks. It's not terribly surprising that a bunch of hard core coders aren't the most socially adept or community savvy folks on the scene. And who knows what kind of "political" or business obligations the Props deal with in areas like demo and sound design invitations. It obviously isn't solely based on talent or innovation. Don't get dragged into their narrow world paradigm. I mean, after all, these are the same crew that either can't understand why it's needed or simply refuse to put simple audio track *playback* in Reason (why does everyone always ask for audio recording? that's so secondary) and so many other stupidities (no horizontal rack layout, for example). So they have their blind spots and shortcomings. You are far beyond needing their recognition.
But the most important thing to consider is that we're totally selfish and you should make killer Reason 4 libraries just so we can be happy! 'Nuff said ;-)
Take care,
-kenny
Hi Kenny :)
I've read your comment and i see your point but the main issue is about motivation rather than making a career. I'm 46 and i've had my "carrer" in most fields i wanted. Trying to push synth software to the extreme is my (nerdy) hobby and motivation is what drives me.
I put up demos of all my things in everyday RAW format so all know that this is the true sound of a synth and not some super mastered version.
Perhaps thats the problem and i know most sound designers rely on making very smooth mastered demos.
Only one problem with that, is the end user will never hear that sound on his own system because whats missing is the super reverb and delay, comp, eq etc... which the sound designer added as a (slight fx) just to (spice it up).
I'm sure everyone knows what i'm getting at here ;) But ohh well that deserves a topic of its own :)
/Michael
Hi Michael!
This is kind of an old issue now but I completely understand and even agree with you. You should have been approached by propellerheads in some way or the other imho. I as your fellow sound designer definitely recognize your talent and that you tried to enlighten the community as to what is possible with the Combinator. I was extremely sad to see you go because I think you can do great things with Thor and the new more freely programmable Combinator.
I hope you enjoy your VST affair ;)
Regards, Daniel "eXode" Olsson
Hi Daniel :)
Well if that didnt happen i would not have stuck to Zebra as much as i do, but i did and i'm glad i did because the things i can get out of this machine now is insane. Sure i miss fiddling with the combinator making odd constructs but i guess things just happens for a reason and i follow the flow where ever that takes me.
Hope all is well and i'm sure we will bump into eachother again :)
/Michael
hi michael,
i'm very sorry to hear bout this non programming invitation from props! surely the loss is on their side along with all reason users. some patches in thor are good but in general it could be much, much better!! in fact, every descent reason user knows that all synths librarys in reason are very poor!!! so why thor makes an exception? i always felt that props never pay attention to pro sound designers, and this is one of their weakest points!
having mess with your xsynth refill, (which in my humble opinion is the best refill ever made for reason) i'm pretty sure that if you program a new refill for thor would be a smash!!! thor has a good engine for complex and devastating huge sounds and i'm sure that if you put your hands on it, a new era for thor will born!!!
so, I hope for a while you forget the ignorance of propellerheads and design a much need THOR refill!!!
hope you’re enjoying life!!!
james
hi michael,
i'm very sorry to hear bout this non programming invitation from props! surely the loss is on their side along with all reason users. some patches in thor are good but in general it could be much, much better!!
in fact, every descent reason user knows that all synths librarys in reason are very poor!!!
so why thor makes an exception? i always felt that props never pay attention to pro sound designers, and this is one of their weakest points!
having mess with your xsynth refill, (which in my humble opinion is the best refill ever made for reason) i'm pretty sure that if you program a new refill for thor it would be a smash!!!
thor has a good engine for complex and devastating huge sounds and i'm sure that if you put your hands on it, a new era for thor will born!!!
so, I hope for a while you forget the ignorance of propellerheads and design a much needed THOR refill!!!
hope you’re enjoying life!!!
james
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